Conclusion

Heri ya mwaka mpya ! 

This blog post marks the end of my safari across the study of water management implications and politics at local level. 

Before starting this module, I knew very little about how water was managed …I believed Africa’s water issue was one of quantity. And yet… how wrong I was. I learnt about new techniques to extract and locate water, which then helped me understand how communities could benefit from international and national integration. 

These past view months have been very thought provoking, in that before I started reading, I was a firm believer in community-led projects combined with private and external actor participation simply because from my previous experiences and from what I had read in relation to development, I felt that grassroots approaches seemed much more efficient, especially when public services were failing in Africa.  

As this term passed though, I came to understand that context was more than just relevant for the implementation of water projects (or any sort of projects really), it was crucial to ensure that participation had a socially just impact, rather than entrenching inequalities. It was interesting for me to explore different aspects of participatory development, from just participation and consultation to total management and accountability. Further, I also came to understand the crucial, crucial role the state has in ensuring top-down governance is driven efficiently, to complement and enhance local projects. In theory, this may sound very romanticised and idealised, however negotiation with local agents, reinforced by the presence of neutral facilitators could be a way to slowly receive state involvement in areas that crucially lack it. 

I was also convinced - and still am, if not more so - that education remains the single most important way to surpass inequalities, as it gives individuals a choice to use their skills and resources. Not all of them do, some move to larger cities, but some stay in the communities. It also helps participating agents to understand the implications of the options presented to them by project implementors for example. 

It remains a highly complex and context-base subject, yet fascinating in the multitude of possibilities that exist. I will therefore leave you with this video about the Great Green Wall Project, which I find inspiring, especially in relation to scaling up and bringing together grassroots initiatives with top-down governance. 

(video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmgrwW5fQ5E)

I hope you enjoyed reading my work. Please, please, feel free to comment, criticise and debate! I'd love to hear your thoughts, and learn from anything you'd like to add!

All the best!

Kwaheri